Nerd alert, more gadgets, Olympus LS10

Whilst on the subjects of gadgets... This year also saw me purchase an Olympus LS10 recorder, which was designed to record live music. This records bird/frog song exceptionally well - although you have to use software like Audacity to boost the volume of the recording for distant stuff. But for getting a record of what you are hearing it is great. You can also download tracks onto the hard-drive or a separate media card - this is handy for tape playback. So you have it all-in-one, a recorder and a storage device for playback. My only problem with it is you do not get a significantly better recording by attaching an external Sennheiser mike (something to do with the gain at the jack I believe...).

The handy Olympus LS10 - every birder probably has one by now, I am so out of touch, but well-worth having in the bag on those overseas trips.